Chapter 32
Chapter 32
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 32
Chapter Title: Freak (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Lord Jenes! Veron is gone!”
Allen cried out in shock.
It was a shout loud enough to wake the night.
Even though they were all looking at the same spot.
“Do my eyes look like mere decorations to you?”
I walked past the guy who couldn’t shut his mouth and headed to where Veron had been.
There were no particular traces. The luggage that had served as Veron’s wall was still there intact.
Allen and Irriel scurried over to my side and peered around. I could sense their urgency in the way their heads darted about.
I said,
“It seems there’s a mage nearby.”
“A mage?!”
They shouted almost in unison.
A piercing cry that shook the quiet night.
Were they trying to summon every monster in the area?
“I can’t be certain, but the odds are high. We need to find Veron first, so pack up the luggage.”
I assigned tasks to the loudmouths and placed my hand on the cliff behind us.
The texture of the rock, chilled by the night air, pressed against my fingertips.
Veron had vanished in the brief moment I’d stepped away to check for suspicious presences.
In front, even during the fight, Allen and Irriel had been standing firm like a wall.
There were only two ways to abduct Veron in that situation.
Either there was a secret passage inside the cliff, or...
I looked up at the top of the cliff.
They probably took him that way.
I sent qi into the cliff face, but felt no hidden spaces.
If there’d been a magical device, I would’ve sensed a distortion in the qi.
The chances were high they’d done something from above the cliff.
The cliff top was shrouded in darkness, but it wasn’t too high. About the height of a three-story building.
I tilted my head back, kicked off the ground, and in an instant, I was standing atop the cliff.
Before me, dark greenery undulated in the shadows.
A forest path thick with trees.
The scenery wasn’t much different from the woods below the cliff. I meticulously scanned the ground around me for any lingering traces.
And soon after, I spotted a small button buried among the grass blades.
I picked it up.
It was definitely Veron’s.
I drew an imaginary line from the edge of the cliff where I’d climbed up to the spot where I found the button.
That would let me infer the direction the enemy had gone.
Fixing on that direction, I carefully examined the ground as I advanced.
...They went this way.
I crouched low and brushed the grass lying flattened in one direction.
Fortunately, the traces continued sporadically.
“Did you find something?”
Allen asked.
He’d hurriedly packed with Irriel and climbed the cliff, so his clothes were caked in dirt, and thick beads of sweat dotted his forehead.
“Fortunately, traces remain.”
At my words, they both let out deep sighs of relief.
Just having a lead to pursue was a stroke of luck.
Irriel rubbed her chest once and lit up with enthusiasm.
“What can I help with?”
As far as I knew, she had no skill in tracking.
I said,
“Just stay put.”
Irriel nodded solemnly. I turned my gaze back to the ground, following the traces.
Allen handed his bag to Irriel and began crawling along the ground like a spider, searching for clues.
We slowly followed the sporadic trail. As I did, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone wanted us to follow.
“Doesn’t the trail feel a bit too deliberate?”
Allen sensed it too and snapped his head up from where it had been buried in the dirt.
“It doesn’t seem like Veron was the only target.”
“Then what?”
“They’re after us too. Good thing. They won’t kill Veron easily.”
I didn’t know the mage’s goal, but if they were targeting us as well, Veron could serve as a hostage.
They wouldn’t just kill him outright.
As long as he stayed alive until I got there, it’d be fine.
But a child’s life hung in the balance.
I couldn’t assume anything. We pursued the trail at maximum speed.
The sooner we confronted the mage, the higher the odds Veron would still be alive.
* * *
The room, made of drab gray stone walls like a dank underground dungeon, was filled with all sorts of experimental tools.
Flasks containing liquids of various colors, surgical instruments that looked meant for dissecting and stitching something back together.
Along the other walls stood transparent glass tubes swirling with hazy smoke.
“Heh heh hum, hmm.”
At the center stood an old man humming a tune as he poured liquids from flasks into a cauldron bubbling with black fluid.
Each time the thin liquid entered the pot, a dark red flash erupted, belching gray smoke.
“Perfect, this should do it.”
The old man stirred the boiling black liquid with a ladle beside him.
As the ladle moved, something like eyeballs and chunks of flesh briefly surfaced before sinking again.
Setting the ladle aside by the cauldron, the old man turned his gaze to the child sitting in one corner.
A boy whose face had paled blue with terror.
It was Veron.
Veron was tied so tightly to the chair that only his small head could move.
“Kekeke, not crying? Impressive.”
A guttural, eerie voice rasped from the old man’s mouth. It matched his grotesque appearance.
His face, draped in a robe no better than a sackcloth, had sagging flesh clinging to his skull, revealing its bony structure. His eye sockets were sunken like black caves, hollow and gaunt.
With only a few strands of hair, he looked like a skeleton wearing a human skin.
“If you’d irritated me with your whimpering, I’d have ripped out your tongue.”
The old man licked his upper lip regretfully. Veron shuddered at the sight, but for a child, he held himself remarkably steady.
The old man eyed him closely.
“Aren’t I scary to you?”
Veron clamped his mouth shut and said nothing. He seemed terrified at a glance, but his eyes didn’t belong to someone gripped by fear.
He had something to rely on.
The old man, sensing it, chuckled darkly.
“Are you banking on those friends of yours to save you?”
Veron flinched, confirming it.
“What a foolish dream.”
The old man lifted Veron’s chin with spindly fingers and continued.
“You and your friends won’t leave this place alive. You’ll end up as empty husks with souls erased, serving me eternally. Assuming the experiment succeeds, that is. Kekeke.”
He laughed in satisfaction. He seemed pleased with Veron’s face flushing red.
“Now you’re finally scared. I like that expression. Do you know what a soul is? Answer me. Before I deem your tongue useless. Or have you forgotten how to speak from fear?”
“It’s not that... your breath just stinks so bad...”
Veron exhaled the breath he’d been holding and forced his mouth open. The rotten stench assaulted his nose with every word from the old man. Seeing the black, decayed teeth, it was like the guy had never brushed once in his life.
Veron breathed through his mouth, enduring it.
If he could move his hands, he’d have pinched his nose immediately.
“Such nerve from a brat. Keke.”
The old man laughed as if finding Veron intriguing. The boy was unintentionally piquing his interest.
But it wasn’t nerve.
Veron was barely suppressing tears ready to burst.
Even so, his boldness stemmed from an unshakable belief that Jenes would come rescue him.
“Now, let’s see if you keep that nerve when you watch your rescuers die.”
The old man grinned slyly and fetched a large mirror from the corner, placing it before Veron.
“I’ll show you despair. It’ll be quite entertaining. I’m quite looking forward to how your face changes.”
Veron saw himself in the mirror, bound head to toe. He understood why the old man said that.
Even to himself, his expression seemed remarkably calm compared to his inner anxiety.
Snap.
The old man flicked his fingers, and the mirror rippled like water, soon reflecting a new scene.
Its surface now showed not Veron, but somewhere else.
“Lord Jenes!”
Veron cried out reflexively at the mirror.
“Uncle Allen! Sister Irriel!”
Veron saw Jenes, Allen, and Irriel entering some cave. Tears welled in the boy’s eyes.
“Am I trapped in this mirror right now?”
“Keke, don’t get worked up yet. They’ve just entered my hideout. The mirror only shows their image. Nothing’s happened to them yet.”
Unintentionally, the old man consoled Veron to heighten his despair later. The boy finally exhaled in relief.
“You trust this one, I suppose?”
The old man’s bony finger pointed at Jenes.
“Sharp enough to detect my watchful eyes. But can he pass through the three gates of hell I’ve created?”
By now, Jenes and his group stood before the old man’s first gate.
“This gate is the ‘Illusory Hell.’ Anyone entering will face endless illusions of swarming orcs. They’ll swing at empty air until exhaustion claims them.”
The old man explained the gate kindly, for Veron’s benefit.
Not out of care for the boy, but to amplify the despair he’d feel.
Grabbing Veron’s chin with one hand, the old man forced him to watch the mirror.
“Watch closely. See how the ones you trust crumble.”
By now, midway through the cavern, the group was acting strangely.
Allen and Irriel shouted at thin air, swinging swords, rolling on the ground in a heated mock battle. The old man roared with laughter.
“Kwahahaha! Look at those clowns! They’re locked in a desperate fight with a horde of orcs filling the cavern! They’ll dance alone until their stamina runs out and they collapse!”
Veron stared anxiously. The old man laughed even louder at him.
“Kuhehehel! They’re no better than flies caught in a web! The more they struggle, the deeper they fall! Now do you get it? You can’t escape alive! Kehkehkel!”
What frivolous laughter.
The old man guffawed so hard his uvula showed, missing that one person stood still.
Then, the idly standing Jenes moved.
He flicked the foreheads of the fiercely “fighting” Allen and Irriel.
Those slashing at air screamed and crumpled, clutching their reddened foreheads as they looked around dazedly.
They wore stunned expressions at the suddenly vanished orcs.
The impassive Jenes was scolding them.
Watching, Veron could almost hear Jenes’s sharp words to Allen and Irriel.
After some back-and-forth, they headed toward the next gate.
“...”
The old man, his laughter faded, watched in silence.